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Friday, 14 April 2017

Develop:Five Tim Wicksteed, Twice Circled

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Tim Wicksteed from Twice Circled answers our five question blog feature.

1. What’s your earliest memory of
playing video games?My earliest memory of playing video games was sitting around with
my brothers, playing the demo discs that came with my Dad's Atari ST magazine.
Seeing our fascination, and being a programmer himself, my Dad showed us how
you could create a simple platformer using code. It was like magic! And that
was that, I was hooked, from that young age.

2. What are you most excited or
annoyed about in the games industry today?The most exciting thing about the games industry today is that is
feels like such an open playing field. There's such a diverse range of gaming
tastes out there that there's room for games of every shape and size. There are
amazingly affordable development tools and the route to the consumer has never
been more direct, both in a promotional sense (YouTube, Twitch) as well as a
technical one (Humble Widget, Steam Direct). But of course there's a catch;
there are also more games and developers than ever before. It's both inspiring
and terrifying, we all have the power to succeed but there's no-one to blame if
we fail.

3. Tell us about a life-changing
or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past.I have very fond memories of my first visit to Develop: Brighton.
I was still early on in my career and I was lucky enough to be invited to a couple
of developer dinners by some friends of mine. It was daunting to hear that all
these much more experienced developers were struggling with all the same things
that I was at the time: discoverability, funding etc. But it was also
reassuring that there wasn't some magic trick that I was missing due to my
relative inexperience. The industry is constantly reinventing itself and in
that flux there are opportunities for established players and new developers
alike.

4.
What are you most looking forward to at
Develop:Brighton 2017?

I'm looking forward to catching up with developer
friends from other parts of the UK. Develop: Brighton is special because it's
the one nearly everyone goes to so it's a great place to catch-up, share and
learn from the experiences of the last year.

5 . Which game developer would you
most like to meet and why? I'd love to meet Finn Brice
from Chucklefish (or perhaps their technical lead Catherine West) and talk
deep, down, technical stuff. I'm amazed by the technical feat achieved by Starbound
so it would be great to just geek out and learn how it was made.

Indie developer Tim Wicksteed (@TwiceCircled) runs Bristol based, one man game studio Twice Circled. He's the creator of pharmaceutical company simulator Big Pharma and was recently announced as a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit 2016.

Tim will be speaking at this
year’s Develop:Brighton – check out his talk here